Seattle likely the Worst City for Dating

The Great Love Debate considered the opinions and demographic data from more than 92,000 singles who have attended the tour’s shows over the last five years, along with thousands more who listen to the podcast, in naming Seattle the absolute worst place to find love in America.

Have you been to Seattle lately? It’s not the city it once was. It’s neo San Francisco. The vibe here to me feels unwell.

Amazocalypse: a brief video tour of the cranes building out South Lake Union

As an aside, in no way is Seattle’s dating woes its most problematic issue. The city has 12,112 homeless people (pdf) and many residents left due to housing affordability issues.

Certainly, mobile apps have forever changed dating but many say it’s the low social skills of Amazon men. A barista near Amazon HQ told me recently that Amazon men frequently make her uncomfortable just ordering coffee.

A key issue is also the high number of men vs. women, at least in heterosexual dating. Amazon disguises the imbalance it has helped create by disclosing only worldwide gender statistics. A friend regularly describes Seattle to me as “filled with dudes.”

Until the 2020 census results are available, we won’t really know the city’s gender realities but here a few articles that provide more background:

In between commercials, KUOW did a 21 minute discussion about the problems of Seattle dating with Susie Lee, founder of now defunct Siren. (Disclosure: I briefly consulted for Siren). While Susie is great at talking about the social skills involved in finding love, there was surprisingly no discussion of the population dynamics. The segment called, “Will cuffing season ever come to Seattle?” failed to realize that cuffs would need to be redesigned for our gender imbalance.